


Whispers of Loss

by Deannie



Series: Sensual [1]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Drama/Romance, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 05:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/794628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jim loses track of Blair in a hostage situation, he fears the worst. Can he work without his Guide to free the hostages before their kidnapper finishes them all?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whispers of Loss

DISCLAIMER: Sandburg, Ellison, Banks, and the rest all belong to Pet Fly and UPN. No monetary remuneration is being received by me, and I intend no real copyright infringement. Rae is mine, as is my pleasant little psycho (snerk), and I'll give the boys back when the girls are done with them. 

NOTES: To keep things simple, this has NOTHING TO DO with my DEPRIVATION or DEAR LOVE series. It's actually the first Sen story I started working on, until J&B distracted me with the other timelines (sigh). It's got a little more polishing before I'm ready with all of it, but I figured I'd send it out this weekend, when I know I'll have *some* time to finish it (sigh). 

RATING: PG-13 for extensive lunacy (evil cackle!). PRE-SLASH, the deed to be completed in the next story. 

THANKS: To Free, my non-stop betareader, who had to deal with this one sitting on the sidelines while I threw out the other series. 

## Whispers of Loss

by Dean Warner  
xangst@frii.com  


"Damn!" 

The woman flipped her long, curly hair back as she heard the oath, and looked over at the driver of the beat-up old Corvair, rolling her eyes in disgust. "What'd you forget now, Blair?" 

The short man glared at her, pushing his own hair out of his eyes. "Rent's due." He looked askance at her. "Look, Rae... I just need to run over to the bank real quick and get some cash." 

"Cash? For the *rent*?" she asked irritably. "Write a check." 

"I'm all out of checks," he whined lightly, turning the car around to head back toward the airport. "There's a branch office just down the road. It'll just take a minute." 

Rae rolled her eyes again, sighing. "You give the phrase 'he'd forget his head if it wasn't screwed on' a whole new meaning, you know that?" 

Blair groaned, pulling into the bank's parking lot. "Just a second, I promise." 

She smiled engagingly. "I have to go to the bathroom anyway. I'll just run in and use the facilities, and meet you back out here, okay?" The smile turned unexpectedly vixen. "But you'd better be taking me somewhere truly spectacular for dinner." 

He nodded, returning her smile. "I know just the place." His grin dropped instantly when he entered the small bank building. The line was almost out the door. 

Rae chuckled deeply, whispering, "Bad Luck Blair strikes again." 

He ran a hand through his hair angrily. "Okay, forget it. I'll come back later." 

She put a light hand on his arm as he turned to go, giving him a small kiss, just for good measure. "Don't worry about it, Beautiful. It looks like the line's moving pretty fast, and it's not like I've got anywhere to go." She squeezed his arm. "At least, not without *you*." 

He smiled both his thanks and his apology as she headed for the ladies room.  
  


* * *

Thirty minutes later, Rae was still sitting in his car, waiting for him to get to the head of the line. 

"Damnit, Blair," she gritted tiredly. "I don't know what sign you were born under--but I'm glad it ain't mine!" She really just wanted to get to the hotel and rest. She'd been hoping they could go out tonight--for more than just dinner. She didn't want to spend her first night back in Cascade sitting around a Hilton suite, watching bad cable films and trying to sleep alone on a lumpy bed. 

She was irritated enough that she didn't even notice the van that pulled up on the other side of the parking lot, and, though the four men and one woman who got out of it were looking around suspiciously, Rae was scrunched down too far in her seat for them to see her. The men nodded to the woman, and headed in, three taking one door, while the woman and the remaining man took the other.  
  


* * *

Blair looked at his watch one last time. He should really forget about  
this. Just drop Rae at the hotel and come back, while she got some rest. He  
was hoping they'd have a chance to really celebrate tonight, but at this  
rate, she'd still be too jetlagged to want to do anything. But there were  
only three more people in line ahead of him. It wouldn't take *that* long,  
would it?

His answer came when one of the tellers shut up her window for the day and began counting out her drawer, and the stuffy-looking businessman two people ahead of him in line walked up to one of the two remaining windows. 

"May I help you, sir?" Blair almost smiled at the tone. The teller was sick of *his* day, too. 

"Yeah," the man replied belligerently. "Look, I got this weird thing on my statement, and..." 

Oh, God, that's it! Blair thought. This guy is going to be here all day trying to figure this out. He stepped out of line, turning toward the nearest exit as yet another pair of customers walked in one door, and three more walked in the other. I'll just stop by again after I drop Rae off-- 

His thoughts were cut off sharply, as he felt a bullet breeze by his head, drilling into the put-upon teller. 

The two other tellers fell in quick succession, certainly too quickly to ring the alarm. Blair had dropped to the ground after the first bullet, but he saw the bank guards pulling out their weapons, as one of the gunmen brought his gun up to shoot out the surveillance cameras before quickly returning to the fray. The sound was almost deafening, as the five people who had come in just seconds ago waged a quick firefight with the bank's security. 

The guards were the definite losers.  
  


* * *

Rae smacked her head on the roof of the car as she heard the first bullet. She tried to peek into the bank, but someone was pulling down the blinds--someone who held something that looked an awful lot like a machine gun. 

She scooted over to the driver's side door, watching carefully to make sure no one was watching *her*, and slipped out, keeping low to the ground. She had to get to a phone! Call it in to the police! 

Blair had said that his roommate was a police officer... What the hell was his name? Jim something?  
  


* * *

"Hey, Ellison? Where's your shadow?" 

Jim grinned at the dispatcher. "He's off hunting, Pam." 

"Good for him," she returned brightly. "At least one of you has a life." 

He was about to take umbrage at the remark, when her desk phone beeped loudly. 

"Central dispatch, this is Officer Cowling. How can I help you?" Pam's face went blank, as she jotted down a message. "Okay, ma'am.... Can I have your name, please? ...No, don't approach the building. We can have officers there in five minutes... Thank you, ma'am..." She hung up the phone, and passed the message on to Jim. 

A bank robbery in progress out by the airport--shots fired. And according to the caller--the note said "Safran", so that was obviously her name--the place had been packed at the time. Jim caught Pam's eye as she called out on the radio to anyone in the vicinity. He nodded sharply, and gestured to himself. 

It was the only thing going on today, anyway, he mused as he headed for his truck. Too bad Blair wasn't here... He'd appreciate being on the *outside* of a hostage situation for once....  
  


* * *

The bank was in chaos. Customers were running everywhere, trying to get to the doors, trying to hide... Trying to do anything to make sure that they weren't the next ones shot. Meanwhile, two of the bank robbers were down, and it looked like they'd managed to kill all of the employees in the process. 

God, Blair *hated* gunfire! He twitched every time one of the guns went off, as if he was being struck by each bullet. One of these days, he thought, he was going to have to find out why he had such an aversion to that sound. Though, looking at the riddled bodies of those two bank robbers, he knew he already had his answer. 

He took a deep breath, gazing over at the bathroom--wondering if he could get to it in the confusion. He could get out that way, maybe. Climb into the air ducts (his lack of size had to be good for *something*, right?), maybe squeeze out the back--something to get word out about what was happening. He wondered briefly if Rae had heard the commotion, and had already called the cops. 

Well of course she heard it, Blair, he told himself angrily. She hears *everything*! 

But maybe she wasn't out there anymore... Maybe they'd seen her in the Corvair, and they'd-- He took a deep breath. Don't think that way, Sandburg. You've got enough to worry about as it is. Just think about how you're going to get *yourself* out of this... 

He hesitated just a moment too long, however, as the woman who had started the gunplay fired an angry round into the ceiling. "Will you all just shut up?!" she roared viciously. 

A hush fell, and all the customers froze in their tracks. 

The woman smiled then, and looked around. "Fucked that up, huh?" she asked, grinning at her fellow bank robbers. "Oh well. Looks like we all get a bigger share of the money now, doesn't it?" 

The men chuckled nervously, as she threw a couple of bags on the counter before her and looked at one of her fallen comrades. "Hey Barry? Will you stick the money in those, huh?" She was met by an understandable silence, and Blair realised that his sides hurt. He didn't know whether he'd stopped breathing because he was scared, or because he was trying desperately not to laugh at the woman's terrible lunacy. He noticed her partners eyeing each other nervously from their posts at the doors. 

"Oh, wait," she said suddenly, turning to the rest of the room, and leaning forward comically. "He can't do that, can he? He's *dead*!" 

She seemed to think that was supposed to be funny--seemed to want everyone to laugh. Not too much later, Blair would swear that it was the stupidest thing he had ever done in his life... But he laughed. 

The woman beamed at him kindly, and Blair had to wonder exactly when she'd go schizoid on him again and shoot. Instead, she threw the bags at him. 

"Can you do that for me, honey? I really don't think it'd be a good idea for me to take my eyes off of the people, huh?" 

Blair rose carefully, sliding around the tellers' desk. All three of them were dead, but he didn't let himself focus on that. Instead, he let the woman's words roll around in his head. "The people." No, not really... more "The People," like she was a movie star, or something. "I can't let down my people" came the old line, slipping into his thoughts. He shook his head to clear it, and continued opening drawers and filling bags. It wasn't really aiding and abetting, he told himself calmly. It was merely staying alive.  
  


* * *

Rae sat in Blair's car, waiting for the cops. The officer she'd spoken with had said they'd have people on the scene in five minutes, so it couldn't be too much longer before they got here. It hadn't even crossed her mind until long after she'd hung up with the dispatcher that she hadn't asked to speak to Blair's roommate. Hell, she couldn't remember the guy's name, anyway. What was she supposed to do? "Hi, I'd like to speak to Jim Somethingorother... No, sorry, I don't know his last name, but he lives with a guy who has the worst luck in the universe..." 

Yeah. That'd go over *real* well. 

Finally, she saw a line of police cars driving toward the bank, lights off, all quiet. She thanked whatever passed for God in Cascade that the robbers had pulled the blinds shut. Maybe they wouldn't see the police cars until it was too late. 

She slipped out of the car again, going around it carefully until she got to the first police car on the scene. 

"I'm the one who called," she said quietly. "Rae Safran." 

"Lieutenant Derricks," the tall young man in the driver's seat replied, unhooking his safety belt and exiting the vehicle. "Can you tell us exactly what you saw?" 

It didn't take long to tell, but by the time she was finished, four more patrol cars, two dark sedans, and a large blue truck had pulled up to the street. Derricks walked her over to the first sedan, where a tall dark man with glasses was standing. 

"Captain, this is Rebekah Safran. She was the one who called us in. Apparently, she's got a friend in the building." 

The man stuck out a well-muscled hand. "Captain Banks, ma'am," he introduced himself. "We'll get your friend out of there, but we're going to have to ask you to stay back behind the cars." He smiled understandingly at her grimace. "For your own safety." 

Rae nodded tiredly, wishing she was closer, wishing she had a better idea of what was going on inside that building. She'd heard at least twenty shots, and knew that the staff had to be dead. She just had to hope that Blair hadn't joined them. 

She was about to walk back to the area Banks had gestured to, when a big buzzcut of a man walked up. 

"Hey Simon," the man said, his eyes zeroing in on the bank in a way that Rae found strangely familiar. "What's going on? Why didn't the alarms sound?" 

"All the staff is probably dead," she replied quickly--too quickly to consider the ramifications of her actions. 

Jim looked at the woman strangely. She could have been Sandburg's twin--with a little modification. She was Blair's height, had his hair--though hers was a good foot and a half longer--and her eyes, though brown instead of blue, were equally as intense, though he could see the circles of hard contacts giving her eyesight a push. "How do you know that?" 

Rae bristled a little at his tone. This guy was just too damned suspicious! "I was sitting outside, waiting for a friend. I'd have to be deaf not to hear the gunshots." 

Captain Banks stepped in between them. "Miss Safran," he asked. "If you could please get back behind the perimeter my officers are setting up?" 

She glared once again at the buzzcut, but left quietly. 

"What did she see?" Jim asked, watching the woman as she stalked away, turning to glare at him from her place at the hastily erected barricades. 

"Not much," Simon replied wearily. "She just said she heard gunshots, then saw someone pulling the blinds." He ran a hand over his short hair. "Look, Jim, I'm going to need you to--" 

Rae Safran was back in an instant. "Your name's Jim?" she asked breathlessly. 

Jim gave her a curious look. How could she possibly have heard Simon from that far away? He nodded. "Jim Ellison." 

A bright smile lit her face for an instant, and Jim was once again struck by her similarity to Blair. She looked just like he did when he finally remembered something he'd been trying to get all day. 

"Ellison! Damnit! I have *no* head for names!" She seemed satisfied with herself--but it only took a second for her visage to fall. "You're Blair Sandburg's roommate, right?" 

He tensed. "His *partner,* yeah," he admitted, waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

When it did, it felt like a size fourteen. "Blair's the friend I went in with." 

Jim's jaw clenched, and he couldn't stop the whisper, even if he'd wanted to. "Damnit Sandburg, what is it with you?" 

"Trust me, Mr. Ellison," Rae replied dully. "Blair lives off of this sort of luck."  
  


* * *

Blair zipped up the second bag, straining to get the teeth to engage over the stash of money. He offered them both to the woman, who gestured for him to put them back on the counter. 

"Okay, kids," she said quietly. "Time for us to go." She smiled to her partners again, and Blair knew something was coming. "Now, I know you'd all like to tell the police what happened--and that's good of you, really. Very 'upstanding citizen,' and all that..." Her face turned tragic. "But, I'm afraid I can't let you do it. Professional policy, you know?" 

While her partners looked on warily, the woman raised her gun, aiming for the businessman who had been arguing about his statement, and Blair primed himself to move-- 

"This is Captain Simon Banks, of the Cascade Police Department." 

The woman froze, and even as battered as it sounded, chopped up by the megaphone the captain held, Blair had never been so glad to hear Simon's voice in all his life. 

"Come out of the bank with your hands up." 

"Hey!" The woman cried happily. "I never knew they really said that." She turned on Blair quickly. "Did you?" 

"Um... No. No, I never did," he answered carefully. 

She pointed her gun at the ceiling with a playful grin. "Cool!" 

Blair watched her for a second, trying to gauge her mood. Her mood, he told himself darkly, was insane. Absolutely shit-faced crazy. Still, he couldn't stop his lips from loosing their words. 

"Um... Look, don't you think you should do what they say?" he asked tentatively. 

She looked up at the ceiling, and shrugged suddenly. "No, I don't think so." Again, the crazy grin. "This is much more fun, huh? This is, like, a hostage situation now, huh?" 

"Yeah," he muttered quietly. "Real fun." 

"Oh, come *on*!" she cried, smacking him forcefully in the arm. "It's an adventure!" 

Blair rubbed absently at his now bruised bicep, and once more, his words were out before he could censor them. "This adventure, I could stand not to live again." 

She stared at him with something approaching awe. "You've done this before?" When he nodded reluctantly, she all but danced with joy. "That is *so* *cool*!" She leaned in confidentially. "Listen, when you were, like... hostaged... did they--" 

"Repeat. This is Captain Simon Banks of the--" 

The woman rolled her eyes. "Boring!" 

"Please at least pick up the phone, so that we can discuss this" 

She grinned. "I didn't know they did *that* either!" The phone rang loudly behind her, and she smiled wildly at it. Then, suddenly, she rounded on Blair. "Look, sit over there, will you?" She gestured with her gun to a clear spot on the floor. "I'll just talk to him for a second, and..." She frowned. "What do I say? Huh? What did they say to you?" 

Blair looked blank for a moment, and she pushed him toward his spot. "Forget it. I'll wing the first one, okay?" She gestured to the guards at the door. "Keep an eye on them, will you?" she asked with a sly smile. "*I'm* going to have a talk with Captain Banks!" 

This woman was *so* crazy! Crazier than Lash, almost. Blair shivered. *Almost*. 

He sat down, crossing his legs beneath him, and put his head in his hands, as if the situation had become too much for him. His hair flopped over his arms, shielding his face, and those around him could begin to hear him whispering faintly. Talking to himself no doubt, wondering what he'd done to get into this situation. God knew that the rest of them were doing the same thing.  
  


* * *

Had they had Jim Ellison's hearing, they would have known that Blair was doing something much more important. Jim only heard him dimly at first, but as he concentrated, the voice became clear. He moved in closer to the bank, using the sight Blair had spent the last two years helping him hone to peek through the tiny cracks that the blinds provided. 

"...Simon's there," Blair was saying, "then I'm hoping you're there too. Either that, or I'm talking to myself here." Jim heard his partner snort lightly. "Wouldn't be anything new, huh? ...Okay, Jim... Look, five people came in, but two of them are dead. There's just this really crazy woman left--the guys she's got guarding the doors seem afraid of her. Which is no surprise, really, cause, I'm telling you, she's apeshit... All the tellers are dead--*and* the security guards... Nobody else, really... But this lady is *so* nuts, man... Everybody's pretty much cowering..." 

Jim moved slowly, trying to get to a place where he could see his partner. It took a few minutes of Sandburg's nervous rambling, but the detective finally settled in, watching his friend rock restlessly, as the anthropologist tried to get out as much information as he could.  
  


* * *

"What do I want?" The woman rubbed the barrel of her gun against her chin, considering the captain's question. There was somebody whispering somewhere in the bank, and it was making it *so* hard to concentrate. "Um.... You know, Simon... I'll have to get back to you on that." Damnit! Someone was still whispering! She held the phone away from her ear and looked around, trying to find the culprit... That kid who had been a hostage before? Aw, shit. Man, she hated to do this, but...  
  


* * *

Blair continued his monologue, oblivious to the annoyed looks that the woman was now throwing around the room. "The woman is about my height... Short black hair and, like... I don't know, Jim--brown eyes? Or hazel..." 

Jim had been scanning what he could see of the rest of the lobby, and wished desperately that this Sentinel hearing went both ways. He could see the suspect circling around tensely, and he prayed for Sandburg to shut up--just for a minute--and let the woman pass him by. Blair finally noticed the robber's movements, but he chose only to drop his voice, down to almost nothing, so that Jim had to strain almost to the point of zone-out to hear him. 

"She was planning on just killing people and leaving, but now..." Blair took a deep breath, while Jim held his. "She's fixated on this whole hostage thing, man..." Jim clenched his jaw tightly, willing his partner to cool it, just this once. "She's an egomanic, Jim... Have Simon play to--" 

There was a big part of Jim's mind that damned him for the excellent view his Sentinel eyes afforded him. He watched, seeing all too clearly, as the woman brought her gun up, bringing her arm down with crushing force to slam the butt of her firearm into Sandburg's head. 

The hiss Jim heard escaping from the young anthropologist was over-shadowed immediately by the frightened cries of the other hostages. 

The woman's voice rose above it all. "Look, shut *up* will you?! He's fine. See?" A gunshot shattered through Jim's ears, and he barely caught her next, self-satisfied words, as he watched Blair's body jerk with the bullet's impact. "Just fine!" 

Everyone outside the bank heard the gunshot, but only Jim could see the effects. He stared, breathless, as that curly head lolled senselessly toward him. There was a trail of blood rolling down from Sandburg's left ear, and Jim found himself drawn into its path. The sight of it--dark, arterial red; the smell--distinct, even from this distance--even the sound of it as it slipped confidently into the crease of Blair's nose. Jim lost himself in all of it, the rest of the world falling away, as he watched the blood slowly pool beneath a motionless head.  
  


* * *

Simon saw Jim jerk back, then focus in desperately, heading for zone-out. But he couldn't go to him. He could only listen to the crazywoman, as she shouted to the hostages around her. "Now that that *whispering* has stopped, can I *please* have a little quiet in here? I'm trying to talk to Captain Banks!" She sounded as reasonable and pleading as a psychopath was likely to sound, and Simon realized that whatever had caused Jim to zone out was only the beginning of a far worse nightmare. 

"Damn!" The woman's light whine caused Simon to close his eyes painfully, praying that she wasn't addressing the man he thought she was. "Look at this! Curly, you got blood all over my gun." 

"Look," Simon was all but shouting into the phone. "We need to know if anyone's hurt in there." He was clutching at straws after that gunshot. "Maybe... Maybe we can make a deal to get them out--Just the wounded." 

He heard slightly hysterical laughter over the line. "Well, nobody's *hurt* in here... Lot of people *shot*, but I don't think any of them are feeling any pain..." 

"Just tell us what you want," Simon whispered. "We'll get you what you want, but you have to promise that no one else is going to be hurt." 

"Ummmmm...." She pretended to consider it. "Nope. Sorry." 

That was it. Click. Conversation over. 

Simon slammed the phone onto his car's seat, cursing quietly, before turning toward the spot where Jim crouched, absolutely still. The captain's movement stopped almost immediately, as he saw a small figure, distressingly like Sandburg, approach the Sentinel. 

Rae put a firm hand on the detective's shoulder, shaking him hard. "Detective Ellison?" she called urgently, knowing how difficult it had been for Blair to shake her from her own zone-outs. "Detective Ellison?" She bent tensely, putting her mouth right to his ear. "Jim! Snap out of it!" 

He snapped back painfully, turning slightly tear-misted eyes to her. "Who--?" 

"I'm Rae Safran, Blair's friend, remember?" She grinned sadly when he nodded, still shell-shocked. "Come on," she whispered, helping him to his feet. "Let's go talk to your captain." 

Jim followed her dully, his mind still fixated on the blood that had run down Blair's face. It had moved so *quickly*--driven by a heart that Jim hadn't even heard stop beating. He closed his eyes painfully as he reached Simon, not wanting to see the question that would be in his friend's eyes. 

"What happened?" The question seemed more painful when spoken, and Jim opened his eyes to the inevitable concern. 

His own voice sounded very, very far away. "He knew I'd be out here," he whispered. "He was trying to pass information out... She must have heard him whispering while she was on the phone with you." 

A strong, dark hand squeezed his forearm in sympathy, but Jim could barely feel it. He couldn't really feel anything right now--and he was damn sure he didn't want to. Something in his mind kicked in, though. There were still other hostages in there. The woman had shown that she wasn't afraid to kill them, and he couldn't stand the thought of Blair's last minutes being spent in vain as he'd tried to get information out to the police. 

"He gave me a few things to go on, Simon," he said, his eyes avoiding the captain's, while his voice gained strength. He repeated what his Guide had told him, barely noticing as Simon wrote it down. When he got to the end, all that was left in his voice was the words. Duty, training, and years of discipline mandated the flow of information--but his heart wasn't in it. "We've got to figure out a way to get in there." 

The captain shook his head. "No way, Jim," he stated, perhaps a little harshly. "Look, she's already shown that she's not afraid to kill these hostages. We go charging in there, we're going to have a whole lot of dead civilians on our hands." 

Simon cursed at his own choice of words, staring at his detective as Jim closed his eyes again painfully, and pausing to wonder if all the good that kid had done for Ellison's attitude in the past two years was about to be undone right here. If he could just keep Jim focused, maybe they could still help the rest of the hostages. He was surprised to see Blair's young friend and virtual twin nod, as if she knew what he had in mind and was willing to help in any way she could. 

"There's a negotiations expert driving out from headquarters right now," Simon told the Sentinel sadly. "Look, just keep an ear out, okay?" Jim nodded, turning back to the bank, oblivious to the hand that Rae Safran had placed on his back. "We'll get them out," Simon assured him. 

Yeah, Jim thought dully. But what was the good when that bullet had killed Blair? He shook himself from the morbid thought, and concentrated on keeping track of the voices in that bank, hoping to stop anyone else from feeling the pain that now threatened to consume him.  
  


* * *

"Well, guys?" the woman asked, looking to her door guards, oblivious to their disquiet. "What do we want? He said they'd give us anything." 

One of the guards looked at the other, and swallowed. "How about safe passage out of here?" 

"'Safe passage.'" Coming from her, it sounded like a line from a film. "Cool. ...What kind of passage, though?" She smiled broadly, suddenly struck by an idea. "You think they'll give us a helicopter? That'd be *so* cool!"  
  


* * *

Simon was on the horn to the precinct now, trying to use Blair's and Jim's descriptions of the head of this gang of bank robbers to find out something that might help them get those innocent civilians out of this mess, but Jim couldn't hear any of it. The Sentinel was feeling lost without his Guide, and was startled to find the smell of cigarettes forcefully invading a nose that seemed to have stopped smelling anything but cordite when that gun went off. 

He sneezed painfully, and heard a muffled curse beside him. 

"Sorry, man," Blair's young friend said, dropping her cigarette to the ground and putting it out with a twist of her heel. 

She really did look like Blair, he mused, tamping down on the pain that his partner's very name brought to him. She even sounded like him, if vaguely. What was she? A long lost cousin, maybe? Part of him almost wished the girl was in the bank, instead of standing here next to him, reminding him constantly that Blair should be there. 

"Miss Safran," he began slowly. 

"Rae," she interrupted. "Look, Detective Ellison... No matter what's happened to Blair..." She took a deep breath, fighting tears as her sharp ears remembered the sound of Blair's whispering, cut off brutally by the explosion of a gun. "I'll help you as much as I can," she offered finally, a small, sad grin on her face that reminded Jim too much of his fallen partner. "It's been a while since Blair helped me out with this, but I think I can remember how to do it." 

Jim just looked at her, baffled. 

Rae hooked her hair behind her ears and pulled at the lobes, a wry grin taking the place of her sadness--if only for a moment. "The original 'Miracle Ears'." 

The detective relaxed suddenly. "You were one of his test subjects?" 

She bristled good-naturedly at the label. "I was a hell of a lot more than that, thank you very much." The young woman turned back to the bank. "You've got ears *and* eyes, huh?" she asked quietly. "Well, that makes this a little easier, anyway." 

He watched her, marvelling at the way she was able to simply put aside her own worries and focus on the task at hand. It was something he'd been *trained* to do--something he'd always been good at--but the remembered sight of Blair's demise left him feeling dull and tired. What was the good of trying anymore? 

"Let's go see what you can see, okay?" 

Jim nodded sullenly, and they approached the hedge that fronted the bank, Jim keeping his eyes open for any sign that the hostage-takers might know they were coming. He zeroed in his hearing on what was going on inside, and tried to keep his eyes open for any chance they might have to get the drop on those hostage-takers. 

"Well," the woman was saying. "I figure that they don't want us to kill the rest of these guys, right?" He could hear movement, tried to figure out what she was doing. "Maybe," she continued--*She's pacing,* he decided finally, catching a brief glimpse of her as she made her round--"We can just get a helicopter, and we're out of here." 

"I don't know, Dana. If they let us go, it's only going to be because they'll know how to catch us." 

It was a voice he'd never heard before. It must have been one of her guards--the guards that Blair had said were getting nervous. Jim took a deep breath. Sandburg. Damnit, how the *hell* had things gotten out of hand so quickly for that kid? Jim tried to zero in again, studiously avoiding the one body he did *not* want to look at. He had some more information at least. A name. Only a first name, of course, but, added to the previous description, it might give Simon something he could use. 

He had almost finished making a mental round of the room when both sight and hearing cut out on him. He cursed, not even hearing his own voice. Damnit! Now was *not* the time for his senses to wig out on him. He felt a small hand on his shoulder that immediately focused him again, and he glanced up briefly into that female mirror of Sandburg's face, smiling sadly. 

"The guard doesn't sound too happy," Rae observed quietly, watching Jim as he nodded, distracted by what his eyes were trying to tell him. 

"There're two of them," he told her. "The one by the other door hasn't said a word yet." 

"Maybe they're not real fond of her killing off their tickets out of there." 

Jim shrugged, standing carefully, as he led her back to the squad cars. "Maybe not."  
  


* * *

"Simon?" 

The captain turned, still seeing the pain in his detective's eyes as the man approached him. "Yeah, Jim?" 

"We've got a name," Jim stated. "One of the guards called the woman 'Dana'." 

"Dana?" Simon asked, exasperated. "Dana who?" 

"I don't know, Simon!" Jim gritted back. "Just Dana." 

"Okay, okay..." Simon paused as yet another police sedan drove up. There was quite a collection of them now. And none of them had done a damned thing! 

A tall blonde woman got out and strode up to Simon. She had attitude written all over her, and he was unsurprised when she introduced herself as Dr. Parshall, the department's *top* hostage negotiation expert. 

"What do we know about them?" she asked briskly. 

Jim gritted his teeth and took over. "We've got three gunpeople. Two men and one woman. We've got a description and a name on the woman--just a first name, 'Dana'--and we've got an undetermined number of hostages down, along with two additional gunmen." 

Parshall looked impressed, scanning the front of the bank quickly with her eyes. "That's a lot of information with the blinds drawn." 

Jim tried not to look uncomfortable as Simon explained. "We had one of the hostages--an observer with the department--who's been feeding us information." His tone told Parshall not to ask how, and she didn't. 

"So what else can this observer tell us?" she asked, immediately turning to Jim as he shifted his weight. "What?" 

Simon sighed. "The head of their operation... apparently found out he was feeding us information," he hedged quietly, not surprised when Jim walked away from them, jaw clenching. 

Parshall watched him go. "He knew the guy?" 

*Please* don't use the past tense, Simon pleaded silently. "He's his partner."  
  


* * *

It had taken no time at all for word of Sandburg's location to run through the ranks of the Cascade P.D., giving many of them an added interest in ending this negotiation quickly. It took almost less time for the rumour to circulate that both Ellison and Captain Banks thought the kid was dead. 

Gina Dickerson, the duly crowned Mother of Vice, pulled her grey-shot black hair into a ponytail as she exited her car and headed for the bent form of Jim Ellison. She had had the day off today, had planned on spending it with her daughter over at the University... But Jim had been one of her special projects when he had worked Vice, and she still had a place in her heart for him. 

She sat on his truck's bumper with him, placing a comforting hand on his arm. He didn't even glance at her, but his own hand came up from the other side to cover hers. 

"How ya doing, Jimmy?" she asked quietly. 

He sucked in a breath that sounded painful. "Not so good." 

His mind rolled her words around. Jimmy. He almost flinched at the nickname. For his father, it had been a call to attention, for Steven, a battle cry--hell, those last few months with Carolyn it had become nothing less than a torture tool. Only in Vice had the nickname come to mean what it should--a name that said he belonged, he was part of a team... He looked up at Gina finally, and repeated his words. "Not so good." 

"Look, Jimmy... You can't just assume the worst here, okay?" She sighed as he turned those dull blue eyes back to the bank. "I know you and Sandburg are more than just roommates, and--" 

Jim stiffened. He couldn't hear this right now, and chose to misunderstand her. "He's my partner, Gina." 

She squeezed his hand sadly. "In more than one sense of the word, huh?" 

He just looked at her for a moment, and she couldn't tell if he was angry, or sad, or simply surprised. She decided to tackle the surprise first. "Hey, Jimmy. I'm Vice, remember? We have no rules." 

"I'm not Vice anymore," he pointed out coldly. "And I do." 

This time, it was Gina who misunderstood, and the lack of comprehension was genuine. "But he isn't a cop, Jimmy. You two shouldn't have to worry about that." 

His eyes suddenly held a pain she had seen before--with his crush on John Littlefield five years ago. An unrequited crush. "Those weren't the rules I was talking about," he whispered. 

"'Don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue'--heavy on the 'don't pursue'?" 

He took a deep breath, clenching his jaw painfully. "Yep." 

She watched him for a long moment, as he tried to keep himself under control. "You remember John Littlefield?" 

"This is an entirely different situation, Gina," he whispered. His hands, fully splayed, came up level with his shoulders as his voice took on a half-hearted parody of his roommate's. "Blair is *so* not into men." 

Gina smiled, giving him a light peck on the cheek and a squeeze of her hand as she stood. "Anyone who looked at you would say the same thing, Jimmy," she whispered as she turned to go. 

But you don't know Sandburg, he thought quietly, standing with a sigh and heading back toward the hedge. He didn't hear Rae following behind, but he knew she was there. Like Sandburg always was--right there behind him, watching his back...  
  


* * *

The woman named Dana was pacing again, stopping occasionally to think aloud. "They'll *try* to catch us," she mused. "But I don't think they will." She looked over at the kid who had said he'd been a hostage before. The blood that had ceased to flow was obscuring his face and had dropped into a puddle on the floor beside him. That was a mess. She should really get this place cleaned up. 

"Too bad Curly over there had to make so much noise," she sighed tiredly. "Maybe he could tell us what to do." 

Dana jumped slightly as the phone rang, and the group of hostages jumped with her. She could have held the room unarmed now, her lunacy the only bindings she'd need. "Sorry guys," she said to her partners. "Gotta go talk to the fuzz." 

"Hey, Captain Banks," she began brightly. 

"Dana," a female voice on the other end said. "My name is Sarah Parshall. I'm a negotiator for the Cascade P.D." 

"How do you get a job like that?" Dana asked. She realized something suddenly. "Hey! How did you know my name?" 

"Dana, We just want this to end well." 

Dana shrugged, not quite noticing that the woman hadn't answered her question. "No reason it can't. Course," she added with a laugh. "It depends on what you mean by ending well." 

"With no more loss of life," the woman clarified. 

"Oh... Well I, um... I think that can be arranged," she answered distractedly, scanning the floor of the bank's lobby. 

"Can we talk about getting the hostages to safety?" 

Dana continued to look around her, barely listening to the woman on the phone. This place really *was* a mess, wasn't it? She should really clean it up, if she was going to have the police bring her a helicopter. It was the least she could do, right? 

"Dana?" the woman asked, shaking her out of her thoughts. "Dana, are you there?" 

"Look, let me call you back, okay?" Dana said briskly. "There's a couple of things I need to do here."  
  


* * *

Parshall looked at the phone in vague shock as the hostage-taker hung up. Jim noticed, and tuned back in to the bank, listening to the events that Simon and the others could no longer hear.  
  


* * *

Dana put her hands on her hips, surveying the room until her eyes fell on two young men who sat cowering together against the tellers' counter. "You two," she said, smiling as they jumped. "You look like strapping young boys. Do me a favor and clean this place up, huh?" 

"Dana..." one of the guards began cautiously. 

"No, Jack," she responded quickly. "Look, we want to leave the place clean, right?" She pointed to the myriad bodies that littered the floor, her finger's aim coming to rest on the curly-haired young hostage she had had to silence. Damn. Wonder what he would say right now, she mused. Probably tell me to do what the cops want. Unfortunately, that's not an option--So I guess it's a good thing he's not going to be here to tell me, huh? 

"Why don't you two move all of those into the men's bathroom, okay?" She smiled coldly. "If any of you have to go, you guys will have to use the little girls' room," she said, pointing her gun at a random hostage. "And you'd *damn* well better put the seat down after you."  
  


* * *

Something was happening. Jim tried to focus as his sight cut out on him again. He listened to the sounds of something--no, a couple of somethings--being dragged across the floor, and he moved forward, trying to relax enough for his eyes to clear. 

A light voice in his ear was accompanied by a lighter hand on his shoulder. "Just relax, Jim." The voice, so like Sandburg's, immediately cleared his vision. Jim let the soothing words send him into a calm space he hadn't been able to get to since he found out Blair was in the bank. He tried not to think about what this meant--that this young woman was guiding him. *His* Guide was supposed to do this... *His* Guide... 

He nearly closed those clear-sighted eyes again, as he saw two young men--hardly eighteen--dragging bodies away from the middle of the room. Two large pillars got in his way, but he figured that they were headed toward the bathroom, as Dana had instructed them. He couldn't see his partner's body anymore, but the bloodstain he'd left on the carpet was all too obvious-- 

And so was a strange hole that had been dug into that carpet... Jim held his breath for a moment, zeroing in on the hole, trusting the hand on his shoulder to call him back, as he threatened to zone out... 

...on a pristine, blood-free bullet, couched in the nap of the lobby's beige shag. 

"Jim?" Rae shook him again, cursing under her breath. What the hell was with this guy? He zoned more than anyone she'd ever known--at least anyone Blair had ever told her about! "Jim! Come on, man," she cajoled quietly. "Come on back." 

He snapped back with less surprise this time, a glint in his eyes that hadn't been there before. "Come on," he said, rising to his feet and heading away from the hedge with purpose. "I have to talk to Simon."  
  


* * *

"Okay," Dana called out brightly, nearly giving the boys a heart attack when she patted one of them on the back. "All clean!" 

She headed for the phone, and stopped suddenly, cursing. "Well shit! I don't even have their number!"  
  


* * *

Jim was running back toward Simon as Dana discovered her problem, and he waved his caption over to him. "She's ready for something to happen, Simon," he whispered breathlessly. "She's waiting for a call from you." He stared at his captain significantly, the gleam in his eye already telling Simon part of what he wanted to say. "And there's something else." 

Simon nodded, walking quickly over to Dr. Parshall and talking with her briefly, before heading back to where Jim waited. If there was more of a spring in his step, Simon didn't even notice it himself. 

He walked back up, his eyes expectant. "Is he still alive?" 

Jim shook his head. "I don't know. All I do know is that that bullet didn't hit him." 

Simon almost smiled. "How do you know?" 

"They moved him. The bullet's embedded in the carpet--but there's no blood on it." 

The captain could see his friend's hope building, and felt horrible about batting it down. But they had to be realistic here. "Jim, that doesn't mean--" 

"No," Jim agreed hurriedly. "You're right, that doesn't mean a thing--but at least it's a place to start." 

"Well," his captain sighed, chewing away on an unlit cigar. "Negotiations are going nowhere, and I'm fresh out of ideas--got any I could use?" 

Jim shook his head. He hadn't had a thought in his brain for the last three hours--beyond how he was going to control these damn senses without Sandburg around... No, that hadn't been the only thing he was thinking--but it *had* been a part of it... The least painful part. 

He glanced at the bank again, not bothering to look too closely. If there was only a way to get a team in without the bank robbers knowing... If they could get someone in behind them, sandwich them between two fronts... 

Wait... He looked back at the bank--or, more importantly, at the air conditioning unit at the side of the bank... 

He pegged Simon with a stare. "Give me a minute. I'm going to check something out."  
  


* * *

Ow... Ow... He tried to ignore the pain... Ow... Blair sighed silently to himself, something at the back of his admittedly addled brain telling him he had to keep it quiet. He didn't know why, but it seemed like a good idea, anyway. His head was *killing* him! And there was something laying over his face, threatening to smother him. 

Okay, Sandburg, he told himself sternly. Pay attention. What the hell is going on? He thought back, remembering picking Rae up at the airport, driving back toward town... The memories snuck back slowly, but he finally figured out where he was--and just how much trouble he was in. He wondered how long he'd been out... He wondered whether Jim was still outside... 

He *really* wondered what the hell was laying across his face! 

He tried to raise his hand to clear away whatever it was. His arms were both lightly covered by something as well, but that was easy to remedy, and he raised one to his head, pushing against the cover on his face. It was tweed or something--but the scariest thing about it was that the tweed was almost warm. 

He tried to open his eyes as he pushed at it, but they met with a strange resistance. Something was sticking them together. He pushed at the tweed again, using his other hand to brush at his eyes. Sticky... Oh, God. It was blood! His panic managed both to unglue his eyes and push the tweed off. 

"Oh *God!*" he kept the oath quiet--not because he needed to keep it quiet, but because the pain in his head made volume impossible. He pulled himself into a seated position, glad suddenly that the headache was blurring his vision. That way he could pretend that he *hadn't* just regained consciousness on a bathroom floor, surrounded by dead bodies. 

Shit! Okay, Blair, okay... He sat still a moment longer, willing the pain in his head to subside. It wouldn't, of course, but he had always been optimistic, so... He vaguely remembered the gunshot, but he couldn't find a hole in himself anywhere, and decided to just thank God for small wonders. 

He tried to listen to hear if anything loud--and therefore, significant--was going on out in the lobby, but he couldn't focus. He'd had concussions before, and knew that he had all the signs of one now. That thought made him wonder if the blood on his face was his, so he reached up again, carefully scanning his face with his fingers. He almost groaned when his gentle hand skimmed across a long, deep gash that ran along his head, starting just behind his ear and running all the way to the corner of his left eye. 

Great, he thought to himself. Just *great*! Another scar to add to the collection--*if* I get out of here alive, that is. He made the mistake of shaking his head in chagrin, and had to spend another few minutes on the ground before he could get to his feet and see about getting out of there.  
  


* * *

"Ellison!" 

Jim came running from his recon trip to the side of the building, as Simon handed his phone off to Dr. Parshall, so she could continue the negotiations that were still going nowhere. 

Simon's eyes told Jim he'd found something. "I just got off the phone with the department. We've got a story on these guys now." He consulted the notes he'd been keeping as he spoke. "Dana Lovell... Twenty different counts of robbery and aggravated assault... And sixty-one counts of murder." 

Jim gaped for a moment, and Simon continued, trying not to see his own worry for Sandburg reflected in his detective's eyes. "Her standard M.O. is to bust into a bank, shoot out the cameras, take all the cash she can... And then kill anyone who might be able to ID her." 

Ellison pushed thoughts of his partner to the back of his mind, trying to sort out the current situation. If he was right, if Blair was alive, then Jim had to figure this out quickly. If he was dead... There were still who knew how many hostages in there... 

"Why would she change tactics now, though?" he mused, thinking back over the last few hours. "Sandburg said something about her being hooked on the hostage situation... Maybe that's got her so caught up, she isn't thinking about following procedure." 

"Maybe," Simon agreed quietly. "But she's going to come to whatever she might call her senses eventually." 

Jim focused on his captain painfully. "Which means we're running out of time."  
  


* * *

Blair made it to the mirror, leaning heavily against the sink as he surveyed his wounds--Well, his *one* wound, anyway. He seemed to remember the woman coming at him with her gun, grip-first. Which meant he'd been pistol-whipped and not shot, though the distinction did little to ease the throbbing in his head. Okay, Blair, he told himself, straightening up and taking a look around. Time to get out of here... 

His eyes latched on to the air vent above one of the stalls, as he remembered his earlier idea of slipping out through the heating system. It looked big enough... He slid over to the door, pulling it open just a crack to see what he could see. 

There was a young girl and her mother directly in his very blurry line of sight, but they were far too sunk in their own misery to notice him. The girl was crying quietly, and her mother held on to her so tightly, that Blair had to wonder if her hands were leaving bruises. To their left, barely in his frame, was the woman who had started all of this, staring down at the girl in irritation. 

"Will you shut her up?" the woman asked coldly. Blair could see her fingering her pistol, and wanted to run out and quiet the girl down before something happened. 

"She's scared!" the girl's mother returned, her fear obviously beginning to override her sense of self-preservation. 

The robber sat cross-legged in front of the little girl, blocking Blair's view. When she spoke, her voice was sickly sweet. "Oh, honey... Don't be scared. It's okay..." She reached out to touch the girl's hair. 

"Don't touch her!" the girl's mother screamed, sending out a hand to intercept the woman before her. 

Blair shut the door quietly, just before the gunshot.  
  


* * *

"Jim! What's happening?"

Jim shook his head, gesturing to Simon for silence. He was in the wrong place to be able to see through the blinds, so he opened up his hearing instead. A very young, anguish-filled wail reached his ears, and his eyes closed in sympathy. They shot open again, as a weeping child called in vain for her mother, and were suddenly as hard and cold as ice. 

"Simon, there's an air conditioning unit at the side of the building," he explained quickly, sliding out of his coat, and tossing it onto Simon's front seat. "The vents should be big enough to slide through. If I can get to a storage closet or a back office, I'll give our guys the signal to move in. If we're lucky, we should be able to take the gunmen out before anything else happens." 

Simon nodded. It wasn't the safest plan he had ever heard of, but he was beginning to realize that they had less and less chance of getting *any* of those hostages out alive. His hand snaked out to grab hold of the front of Jim's shirt as the detective started to turn away. "Dickerson?" 

Gina walked up quickly, noticing Jim's less depressed state as she neared them. "Yes, Captain?" 

Simon gestured to Jim, whose face took on a grim defiance. "I want you to go with Ellison. He's got an idea." 

"Simon--" Jim began slowly. 

The captain glared at him. "This is not open for discussion, Jim." 

Jim sighed. Simon had that edge to his voice again. It truly *wasn't* open for discussion, so Jim simply nodded coldly, and motioned for Dickerson to follow him.  
  


* * *

Get yourself under control! Blair yelled to himself, trying to stop the tears that ran silently down his face, stinging painfully as some of them leaked out past the cut at the edge of his eye. He needed to find out if he could get out of here. If there was a way out, there was a way in, right? He could get out, let Jim know what the situation was, and then show the detective how to get back in here without anyone knowing. 

He headed to the door one more time, wanting to get a firm count of just how many people were out there. *How many *live* people,* he sighed angrily. He wouldn't be able to see the whole room, but at least he'd have some idea of what to tell Jim. 

He wondered where Jim was--if he was even outside at all. If not, that crack to the side of his head was for nothing. Rae's hearing was good--incredibly good, in fact--but she had nothing on Jim, and would probably have been whisked away by the department by now, anyway. He tried to ignore the worry that Rae had been taken out before the bank robbers ever entered the place. If she was dead, and Jim didn't even know Blair was in here... 

No, Jim had to be out there. Rae was fine, and she would have told Simon who she'd come here with, and he would have told Jim... He was out there. Blair just had to get him the right information, so this nightmare could end before anyone else got killed. 

He looked out from the slit of the door carefully, counting about fifteen hostages who were at least partially in his line of sight. That meant twenty or more, probably... He had no idea about ammunition. He hadn't seen the gunmen carrying anything when they came in but their guns and the bags he'd filled with money. But that didn't really mean anything, did it? 

The door closed silently, and he headed toward the vent he'd seen earlier, pausing now and then when vertigo overtook him. He might as well ignore the pain in his head and the nausea in his gut, because, he told himself coldly, there was nothing he could do about it now. Once he was out, and his friends at the department had saved the day, he could have all the aspirin he could take, but for now, he just had to find a way to escape. 

The vent was screwed in place--which was no problem for his swiss army knife, but the grate had also stuck slightly with time. Mentally crossing his fingers, Blair pulled at it, shocked by how much noise it made when it jerked free of the wall. 

He didn't pause to listen--didn't care to know whether the gunmen had heard it and were on their way to investigate. He just set the grate on the toilet beneath him and wormed his way into the vent, moving as fast as he could.  
  


* * *

Dana Lovell looked behind her angrily. God! What the hell was that noise? If it wasn't one thing, it was another, today. She wondered, fighting the giggles, if those dead guys in the bathroom had suddenly come back to life. The idea struck her as so amusing that she figured she'd just go and see for herself. 

"Jack," she called over her shoulder, checking her pistol's clip idly as she went, unsurprised that neither of her partners had heard the noise. "I'm going to go check out the stiffs. You two mind the store, 'kay?" She looked briefly at the new corpse on the floor--well, it wasn't quite a corpse, but it would be soon--and grabbed its hand, pushing the sobbing little girl off of her mother's body and dragging that body toward the bathroom. 

One more to add to the collection, she decided cheerfully.  
  


* * *

Jim and Dickerson walked around the bank silently, coming to the air conditioning unit that Jim had seen earlier. There was a fresh-air vent just to the side of it, more than sufficient size for him to slide in. Dickerson was so small, she would have had no problem in any case. 

"Okay, Jim," Gina said quietly, pulling her ponytail into a compact knot and securing it with another rubberband from her pocket. "What's the plan?" 

"We try to get to a storage room, or a back office." He tapped his communications headgear. "When we give Simon the signal, another group moves in from the front." 

She nodded, securing her own com unit to her ears. "Sounds good." 

"We've got to isolate Lovell as quickly as possible. If what I think is the case *is*, her guards aren't likely to go off shooting if she's no longer in the picture." He noticed something in her hair suddenly. Something that caught the light. "Gin," he asked, laying a careful finger on her hair. "What is that?" 

She smiled as she fingered it. "Hair wrap," she replied briefly, climbing silently on to the garbage bin below the vent. "I got it last week when I was hanging out with my daughter at the university." 

Jim's face went a little white when she mentioned the university, and she crouched on top of the bin, a comforting hand squeezing his shoulder. "Come on, Jimmy," she whispered. "Sandburg's gonna be fine. You'll see." 

He didn't answer. At least now, he knew that the bullet hadn't hit him. But Blair had still been completely silent for more than three hours--which just had to be a record in *somebody's* book. How bad would that blow to his head have to have been to keep him out this long? Bad enough to crack his skull? Jim just didn't want to think about that now. He needed to concentrate on the case. 

"Come on, Ellison," she repeated, slipping into the vent before him. "Sandburg's going to start to wonder where the hell you got to."  
  


* * *

Blair had reached the first turn in the vents when he heard the bathroom door open behind him. He heard the crazy woman scream out her anger, and he tracked her mentally as she headed for the vent. 

"Curly?" She wasn't screaming now. It was the same sickly sweet voice she'd used before she shot that little girl's mother, and Blair slid quickly into a side vent, listening carefully. 

"Curly?" she repeated. "What? D'you pull a 'Lazarus' on me? ...Are you in there?" 

The sound of gunfire in such a confined space deafened him immediately, causing his head to explode again. He curled into a tight, pain-filled ball in the side vent, wondering if the metal around him was strong enough for bullets to ricochet.  
  


* * *

Both detectives froze as they heard the reverberation of gunshots in the cooling system. Jim tried to filter the sound out, hoping to catch some idea of what was going on ahead of them. 

"Come on, Curly," Dana Lovell was pleading coldly. "Look, if you come out, I promise not to shoot you." 

"Like you didn't shoot that girl's mom?" 

The voice almost made Jim faint. Blair sounded like he was still hurting badly--and Jim didn't even *have* to hear him to know he was scared--but he was alive! Jim kept his ears open, gesturing to Dickerson to continue--but slowly! 

"Okay, fine!" Dana responded. Jim heard her voice turn away slightly, as she called to someone in another room. "Hey Jack! Bring that little girl in here, will you?" 

Blair's voice got rougher, though Jim hadn't been sure that was possible. "Leave her alone!" 

"'Leave her alone'!" the woman parroted coldly. "You get the hell out of there, and I'll think about it!" 

Jim held his breath, picturing the look on his partner's face right now.  
  


* * *

The thought wouldn't have done Blair justice. His tears had caused the blood that caked his face to run further down his neck, and his mad dash for cover when the gunfire began had opened up the wound again. He couldn't let her kill that little girl. If he had to get shot himself when he reached that bathroom, he couldn't let that happen.... He took a deep, frightened breath, fighting against the pain in his skull. 

"I'm coming out!"  
  


* * *

Jim caught hold of Dickerson's ankle, causing her stop and turn back to him. "Hang on a sec," he whispered, trusting her communications gear to pick that up. "Simon?" 

"Yeah, Jim," his captain answered, voice scratchy and tense over the line. "I'm here." 

Jim hedged, for the benefit of Dickerson and anyone else who might be able to hear him over the link. "I think I heard Sandburg's voice. He must have been in the duct work." 

He heard Simon's relieved sigh all too clearly. "What do you want to do, Ellison?" 

"Let's just wait here for a second, until we can figure out what's going on." 

He heard Simon agree with him--but only dimly. He was concentrating on the sounds he could hear from the far side of the building. Just don't lose your cool, Sandburg, he prayed silently. He'd heard a lot of things in his partner's voice--Fear, certainly... Pain... But, above all, there was an anger that Jim had only heard once before--at St. Sebastian's, when Blair had been ready to take the head off of the man he thought had killed Brother Marcus. 

We're almost there, Buddy, he whispered in his mind. If you can just hold it together until then...  
  


* * *

Blair's anger grew as he headed back to the bathroom, sliding easily through the air duct. He wished now that Jim had convinced him to start carrying a gun. A bullet through the brain was too good for the woman whose head he could see peeking into the vent, but the sight of her bleeding out on the floor would do wonders for his mindset, just now. 

A number of things ran through his head in quick succession. The guards outside were obviously not fond of their partner's habit of abusing the hostages. They might be convinced to give this whole thing up if she was out of the picture. And she wasn't any bigger than he was--hell, he probably outweighed her by a good bit. If he could overpower her, knock her out... 

Jim's voice--the ever-popular manifestation of Blair's survival instinct--spoke in his head, telling him that the risk was too great. *She* had the gun, after all. But it wasn't a machine gun, like her partners had. It was just a pistol. It couldn't be *too* hard to get it out of her hands. His leg was still a little tender from Duncan Quinn's two-month-old bullet, but he thought he could take her out. 

Of course, Jim would *kill* him if... well, if this lady ended up *killing* him, but-- 

"Come on, Curly," the woman encouraged him sweetly. "That cute little girl is still waiting." 

Blair gritted his teeth angrily as he pulled his upper body out of the vent, pausing as another wave of dizziness hit him. He braced himself on the walls of the bathroom stall, bringing his legs down carefully to rest his feet on the toilet seat. He could kick out at her right now--catch her by surprise. But that damned Jim/survival voice came to him again. Just wait, it whispered. The police have got to come in soon. You've just got to hang on until then. 

"You know," the woman said, irritation thick in her voice. "I think I'll have to shoot that little girl anyway. You're just too damn *slow*!"  
  


* * *

Jim clenched his jaw as he heard Lovell trying to push Blair's buttons. It was working--Jim was sure of that. 

"Just don't lose it, Chief," he whispered--too quietly for even Dickerson to hear. "Just let her rant."  
  


* * *

If she had kept the argument between the two of them, Blair might have been able to let it go. After all, he was a full-grown man, more or less able to take care of himself. But for this *bitch* to use a little girl's life against him... He took a deep breath, and prepared to come down from the toilet seat he stood on. 

"There you go, Curly," she encouraged pleasantly. "Now," she began, walking backward carefully as he exited the stall. "You can come out into the front room, and tell us all how you came back from the dead." She smiled meanly, taking entirely too much pleasure in twisting the knife. "Maybe you can teach that little girl's mom how to do the same?" 

That was all Blair was going to take. With a look of fury on his face that would have been alien to most who knew him, the young man charged.  
  


* * *

Jim pushed at Dickerson, gesturing for her to get over and let him through, then gesturing again for her to follow him. "Simon, we're going in--have a team ready to get in those front doors." 

"What's happening?" 

Jim's jaw clenched, hard enough to break teeth. "This woman is pushing entirely the wrong buttons," he replied shortly, making a beeline for the sounds he heard coming from the bathroom.  
  


* * *

She was strong. Blair hadn't expected that. She seemed to let her gun do most of the strong-arming, and people like that usually did it because they didn't have the physical strength to back it up. But this one must have been lifting weights in her spare time. He ignored the pain of yet another kick to his knee, and fought to relieve her of the gun she still held firmly. 

"You're... *strong*... Curly," the woman gasped angrily. "Still... Gun beats flesh... every... time..." 

Jim was nearly to the bathroom when he heard the shots. He surged forward in panic, just in time to see Blair and Dana Lovell fall to the ground together. From this angle, he couldn't tell if the shots had hit either of them, but he sure as hell wasn't going to wait to see who got up first. 

"Simon, have that team move in *now*!" 

"We're already here, Ellison," Ryf's voice came over the comm strong and clear, and Jim realized, as he slipped out of the duct, that he hadn't been paying the slightest attention to what was going on in the main room of the bank. He'd just hit the floor when two SWAT team members burst in the bathroom door. 

Jim tried to ignore the line of dead bodies off to his left, and ran over to the two whose heartbeats told him they were still alive. 

"Sandburg?" He carefully rolled his partner off of the woman he'd been fighting, suddenly terrified by the amount of blood that covered the younger man's face. The blood was old, though, he told himself, the wound only bleeding lightly now. It must have been from the pistol-whipping that had knocked the anthropologist out so long ago. What he had to concentrate on now was the blood that was still running freely from a wound in his partner's chest. 

"Well, *she's* alive," Ryf said quietly, examining the bullet wound in the bank robber's abdomen. He moved off slightly as Dickerson ushered a group of paramedics into the room, gesturing to both Sandburg and Lovell. Ryf turned to his fellow detective, still leaning over his friend. "What about Sandburg?" 

Jim focused carefully, trying to block out the sound of his own racing heartbeat, as he searched for his partner's, trying to block the sight of the blood, as he tried to find the bullet that had caused that heart to falter. He tried to push passed the chips of bone and trails of blood, but failed to find the slug. "Look's like the bullet's still in there," he whispered. 

"Jim?" The thin, reedy voice caught the detective off-guard, and he looked up to Blair's face. His left eye was at half mast, but he looked clear--like he knew what was going on. 

"It's okay, Sandburg," Jim whispered, smiling into those pain-filled eyes. "You're gonna be okay--" 

"Jim," Blair continued fighting for every precious breath. "There's a woman--the little girl's mother..." 

Jim looked around, catching sight, through the doorway, of a civilian who was being worked over by the EMTs. "She's alive, buddy," he whispered, laying a comforting hand on his partner's arm, as his other hand moved to put pressure on his chest wound. 

Blair sighed in relief, his eyes rolling up into his head as he finally gave back in to the darkness that was calling him. Jim took a deep breath and moved back, letting the EMTs care for his partner.  
  


* * *

The rest of the day was a blur to Jim. He'd vaguely listened to Simon and Dr. Parshall as they praised his quick thinking. That was stupid, he decided coldly. Wasn't like he'd done anything at all--he'd just slipped in at the end, after Sandburg had done the hard part. 

He sighed, looking up at the clock for the fifth time in as many minutes. Blair had done the *really* hard part. He'd been in surgery for far too long, and Jim was getting antsy. He started to pace quietly again, not noticing the pair of near-sighted eyes that tracked him. 

"How long is this going to take?" the mouth below that pair of eyes finally asked, pulling Jim from his thoughts. Rae Safran had ridden in the ambulance with her friend, while Jim was forced to stay behind at the crime scene. Simon was going to catch hell for letting Parshall hook him into the clean-up operation. It had been an hour before he was finally able to get to the hospital, and he rushed in only to learn that Blair was still in surgery. Rae had handed him a cup of coffee, and led him quietly to the waiting room where she'd been passing her time. 

"I'm going to go find someone who can tell us what the hell is going on," Jim grated angrily. 

She stopped him with a light hand on his shoulder. "Don't, Detective Ellison," she whispered. "They'll let us know as soon as they can." 

He just looked at her. "How the hell can you be so calm?" he wondered. 

Rae shrugged. "Not the first time I've waited for word in a hospital." 

It wasn't the first time Jim had, either. But it *was* the first time he'd gone this long without hearing word. When Sandburg had been brought in after being dosed with Golden, he'd been told almost immediately that his partner's condition was dire. When they had sent the anthropologist off with mountain search and rescue after that fiasco with Quinn, he and Simon had already been well aware that the kid would pull through. He hoped that that was the case now, too--he just didn't have any doctor to give him useless platitudes to tide him over. 

"How long have you known Blair?" Rae asked quietly, patting the seat beside her. 

Jim sat restlessly, his legs still twitching with the impulse to pace. "Two and a half years." 

Rae smiled. "And he's been testing your sight and hearing relentlessly for...?" 

Jim grinned. "All of it." 

"Thought so," she replied with a nod. "He's a persistent little shit, isn't he?" 

I wouldn't have it any other way, Jim thought, his eyes going to the clock again in pain. Three and a half hours and counting... 

"He has his good points, though," Rae continued, ignoring the detective's agitation. "Too bad he's got such bad luck." 

Jim's eyes widened, though his voice still sounded distracted. "Has he always had bad luck? I thought that was just from hanging around with me." 

The rich chuckle that came from the girl startled him. "God, I wish! 'Bad Luck Blair' has been getting into trouble for as long as I've known him." She smiled fondly. "He's obviously broken a lot of mirrors--it's been a lot more than the requisite seven years." 

"Your hearing," Jim asked suddenly, sitting back to look at her. "How did he latch on to you?" 

If anything, the smile grew fonder still. "We knew each other long before it manifested... Originally, he thought it might be because I'd just spent six months in the Outback, studying the aborigines." She grinned ruefully. "Of course, once he got me in that lab of his... Well, he couldn't stop testing, you know?" 

"Intimately," Jim commiserated. 

"He's always been a bulldog with this Sentinel thing," Rae offered. She wasn't defending Blair, just stating his history. "In fact," she remembered with a laugh, "he scared this guy off completely once. Poor thing thought Blair was interested in him--but all that little shit wanted was to try out the guy's eyes." 

Jim sighed. Blair was apparently just as straight as Jim had always thought. Still, Rae seemed to know the young anthropologist pretty well... Maybe it couldn't hurt to ask... 

His thoughts were reluctantly interrupted by the chirping of his cellphone. He dragged it out, knowing who he'd find on the other end. 

"Jim? It's Simon. Any word on Sandburg?" 

"Not yet, Simon--" 

Rae had grabbed his arm as she heard a pair of rubber-soled shoes heading toward the room. 

"Simon, I'll have to call you back," Jim said briefly, rising to meet the doctor as she entered. 

"Detective Ellison?" the small woman asked. When Jim nodded, offering his hand, she shook it warmly. "I'm Dr. Tallor. Mr. Sandburg's luckier than he should be." 

Rae grinned. "Really, we were just saying the opposite." 

"Well, don't tell his lung that, then, because I didn't just spend all that time repairing it for it to collapse on me again." Tallor pushed the blue paper cap off of her head. "He's going to be pretty much out of it for the next couple of days, I'm afraid. We need him to stay still, and the pain medication is going to knock him out anyway." 

"Keeping Sandburg in one place is quite an accomplishment," Jim offered with a relieved grin. "I wish you luck." 

Tallor smiled cheekily. "Wish the Demerol luck, Detective." 

Rae stepped forward slightly. "Can I see him?" 

The doctor saw Jim's jaw clench and looked the two of them over, deciding that the Demerol would certainly keep them from taxing the young man's strength. "Sure--Mind you, he won't be out of recovery for a few more hours, but I'll show you both where we'll be putting him." She scrutinized Jim carefully, taking in his sunken eyes, and the soot and blood and grime that covered his t-shirt and blue jeans. "That should give *you* enough time to make yourself a little more presentable."  
  


* * *

"The bullet took a pretty wild ride after it broke the rib," the doctor was saying as she led them to the small private room that the police department had arranged for Blair. "His lung was punctured, and that's going to be his biggest problem in the long run. Somehow, bones just never seem to hurt as much, you know?" 

Jim didn't believe that--having suffered both broken bones *and* soft tissue gunshot wounds, but he didn't bother to mention it. Dr. Tallor introduced both of them to the nurses on shift--though two of them knew Jim already, from his time at Sandburg's bedside after the Golden dosing. 

One of them, a stunning brunette who had taken *very* good care of Sandburg the last time he was in, tsked sharply as she looked Jim over. "Detective," she asked sternly. "Am I going to have to force you to go home every night *again* this time? I don't like you hovering, and you know it." 

Jim smiled, holding up his hands in surrender, missing the strange look that Rae was giving him. "That was a special case, Heather. I promise." 

"As a matter of fact," Rae said, capturing Jim's arm tightly. "He was just about to take me home." Both Heather *and* Jim looked at her in shock, but she brushed it off with a shrug. "Doctor? You said two or three hours?" 

Tallor was trying very hard not to laugh at this small whirlwind who threatened to take complete control of the situation. "More like four or five, Miss Safran." 

"Okay, then," Rae said, turning Jim decisively down the hall. "Since I rode in the ambulance, you'll just have to drive me home, won't you, Detective Ellison?" 

Jim glanced back helplessly at the hospital staff, as Rae led him into the waiting elevator car.  
  


* * *

Showered and fed--with a short, albeit restless, nap for good measure--Jim returned to the hospital minutes before the four hour time limit had been reached, to find Blair already settled in his room. He'd apparently been there a while, and the detective had the sneaking suspicion that Tallor had simply wanted to get him out of the way so he wouldn't pace the floor to shreds while waiting. 

Rae was at the loft, trying to catch up on the sleep she hadn't gotten this afternoon. Jim had insisted she cancel her hotel room and stay there, and they had driven down to the bank--where the cleanup crews were still going at it--to pick up Blair's car and her baggage. She'd been quietly thankful for his offer, and it wasn't until she thought he was safely napping that she fell apart completely, sobbing in Blair's room until Jim thought he'd go crazy if he didn't go down and comfort her. 

She hadn't given him the chance to even try, however, and he realized that if he could hear everything that went on in Blair's room, then she could undoubtedly hear him moving around upstairs. When she cut her tears off sharply as his foot hit the stairs, he decided not to push it, and picked up the phone instead. 

"Banks." 

Jim smiled at Simon's typical, terse greeting. "Hey, Simon." 

"Jim!" Now Simon sounded more his friendly self, Jim had thought with a smirk. "How's Sandburg?" 

"He'll be okay." Jim stopped suddenly, realizing that that was the first time he'd actually said those words since this started. It was the first time he'd been able to believe them. 

"Well, Lovell will be in a wheelchair for her arraignment, but she'll be there," Simon responded, a little more light in his voice. Jim smiled to himself again. If Simon knew how much Sandburg had grown on his old crusty captain self, he'd throw the kid out of the department on his butt--if only to keep his reputation as a hardass. "Her partners can't wait to rat her out. They're practically fighting over which one gets to testify against her first." 

"What about Mrs. Zaun?" The only other gunshot victim to survive the hostage situation had been the mother of that crying little girl--the woman whose shooting had sent Blair over the edge. 

Simon was silent for a moment, and Jim closed his eyes, realizing that Rae had been listening to both sides of the conversation, as she started crying again in the room below. "It was a gutshot, Jim," Simon said finally. "There wasn't much they could do for her." 

"At least Lovell won't be getting out of jail--ever," Jim returned. 

"With Sandburg's testimony, I think the death sentence is going to be a sure bet." 

Sitting in the hard plastic chair that seemed to be standard issue for every hospital room Jim had ever seen, he decided lethal injection was too good for her. He put a hand on his partner's uninjured right arm, looking carefully at his calm relaxed face, marred by the white of a bandage that covered his left eye, and ran to the side of his head. 

Jim grinned ruefully. Blair was lucky he had so much hair--they'd had to shave off a good bit of it, just to stitch the wound, but that mop would make the bald spot easy to hide... If only his *own* bald spots were as simple! 

But there wasn't any skull fracture... The rib would have to be partially reconstructed in another surgery, after Blair recovered from the first, and it was going to take a long time to heal, but the gunshot hadn't been life-threatening... All in all, Jim decided that Blair *was* pretty lucky, after all. Taggart had laughed over the phone when Jim called him with the news, saying that if the kid was *really* lucky, they wouldn't be having to give him his civilian Medal of Honour in a hospital room. 

Sandburg deserved it. He deserved to know that his acts had ended this thing without more loss of life--*without *much* more loss of life*, Jim thought sadly, thinking of Mrs. Zaun. He looked at the partner he'd never thought to see alive again, and felt tears building. He could let them go now, now that he didn't have to worry about keeping his focus or losing his mind... Gina's words came back to him, and he rubbed his partner's hand softly. "I'm glad you're back, partner. I..." 

He snorted angrily through his tears. Jesus! Even with the kid doped up on so much Demerol that he was probably on another plane of existence, Jim *still* couldn't say it! Why was this so *hard*? 

He knew the answer even before he'd asked the question. Because this was Blair. Because the kid had had (and Jim *had* been keeping track!) 6 serious *girl*friends and 14 meaningless, *heterosexual* one-night stands since they'd lived together. He'd never once come home smelling of men--and he almost never *didn't* come home at all. So Jim had taken that to mean that Blair just wasn't interested. 

But Jim *was*. Oh, God, was he. Still, he'd had crushes on men--and *women*--that he'd worked with, before, and managed to keep himself fairly sane. After all, being a bisexual cop wasn't something you just wanted to flaunt.... 

He sighed deeply, grasping his roommate's hand one last time before he rose. "I'll see you later, Chief," he whispered. "I just came by to make sure you're settled in." His lips had brushed against Blair's forehead before he was even aware of his actions, and he froze, somehow terrified that Sandburg's eyes would suddenly snap open, and he'd be caught in the act. 

But the eyes stayed closed, and he sighed again as he turned to leave.  
  


* * *

"Rae?" Jim looked around, the sounds of the shower, and the woman who currently inhabited it, suddenly assaulting him. His senses were still acting funny, and he wasn't sure why. After all, he knew Blair was going to be fine. Why should the stress of waiting for him to wake up cause this much interference? 

The shower shut off just as he was opening the refrigerator for a beer, and a very wet head of curls stuck out from the bathroom. "Don't start dinner!" she called breathlessly. "I'll be ready in a few--I'm taking you out." 

Jim smiled. God, this girl could be controlling. His mind flashed on her voice, telling him that she had been "a lot more than that, thank you very much." He remembered the light in Blair's eyes--just this morning? God!--when he'd told him he was picking up a friend at the airport. 

Obviously, Rae was a lot more than a friend, he thought with a sigh. 

"Can I at least grab a beer?" he asked, a smirk in his voice. 

"If you do, I'll have to drive," she cautioned, slipping quickly into Blair's bedroom. "And I am a *horrible* driver!" 

"Okay," he whispered bemusedly, replacing the bottle on the top shelf. "So, no beer." 

"Good choice!" 

It still startled him. It was obvious that she didn't have his hearing, but she was still good... Jim wondered just how long Blair had been fixated on this Sentinel thing. Rae had known him longer than Jim had... Maybe he should just ask her. 

"So, when did you meet Sandburg?" Jim asked, cutting into his steak with relish. He really hadn't realized how hungry he was until Rae had suggested the old steak house. 

She gulped down a bit of wine and waved away the question. "When we were kids," she answered with a shrug. "He and Naomi spent a year at the kibbutz where I grew up when Blair and I were about five, and we just sort of stayed in touch." She smiled fondly. "I was kind of surprised when he showed up at Rainier for his undergraduate work. We hadn't spoken in almost four years, and there he was, taking the same classes I was." 

"You're an anthropologist, too?" 

"Yep," she agreed proudly. "A more *practicing* anthropologist than him, obviously." She leaned forward. "Did you know that he was asked by one of the foremost anthropologists in the world to join an expedition to *Borneo*? And he *refused*?!" 

Jim nodded through his iced tea. "Dr. Stoddard, right?" 

She raked him with a suspicious glare. "You're the friend who needed his help? The one he didn't think he could just leave in the lurch?" 

Jim had never heard that from Blair. "It's about friendship," Blair had said... Friendship. 

He felt Rae watching him closely and cleared his throat. "Um... Actually, it was a friend of both of us. He'd been in a helicopter crash, and..." 

She sat still, waiting for him to finish his thought. When he didn't, she smiled. "Then I guess I have your 'mutual friend' to thank for my latest research grant." 

His eyes widened in surprise. "*You* took the trip?" 

"Where do you think I just got back from?" she asked, smiling through her definite tan. "Eli was so happy with me, that he offered to endorse my study of the Inuit colonies in Northwest Canada." She took another sip of wine, looking for the waiter so she could order some more. "I'm just stopping over here to visit a few friends." 

The next few minutes had both of them sunk pleasantly in their own thoughts. Jim was thinking about what Blair might have said to Rae when he refused the trip to Borneo, while Rae was thinking about *exactly* what Blair *had* said. 

"I've got this friend," Blair had said quietly, a sliver of desperation in his voice. "He just... He needs me, Rae. You know? I mean, I can't just leave him in the lurch." 

Rae hadn't understood back then... But she thought she did now. Blair had never been one to discriminate between men and women when it came to his lovers, and Jim was a *gorgeous* man. She frowned, sipping yet more wine. Still, this big buzzcut of a detective didn't look like he was... so inclined, so to speak. But looks could be deceiving, couldn't they? 

"What?" Jim asked suddenly, and Rae realized that she'd been frowning. 

"Oh, nothing," she breezed on easily. "I'm just thinking how strange it is to be back in civilization again--well," she blushed quickly. "*Relative* civilization, anyway." 

Jim smiled, a bit more at ease. "Yeah, Cascade is certainly full of surprises, isn't it?" 

She smiled up at him, pleased not to see the pain that had been there since she'd met him. 

Yep, Cascade was certainly full of surprises.  
  


* * *

Okay, this *had* to be hell... No, he didn't really believe in hell... Maybe he'd been reincarnated as a Klingon pain stick? Blair Sandburg took a tentative breath, and groaned. 

"Hey, Beautiful." 

Okay, so Rae was here. That meant it couldn't be hell... She was definitely an angel... A cotton ball, he decided fuzzily. He'd been reincarnated as a pain-filled cotton ball. Who would be so stupid as to reincarnate him as that? 

"Beautiful? Blair? Honey, you in there?" 

"I 'ppose," he hissed tiredly. His left eye *hurt*! He wanted to look around, if only to see what this mixture of heaven and hell looked like, but he was afraid that the eye in question might fall out. And if he had to get up to find it...? Nope. Better to keep his eyes closed. 

"Tell you what," his angel whispered, rubbing a comforting hand up and down his arm. "You go back to sleep for a while, and I'll wake you up..." Her voice was suddenly very husky. "In a very good way. I promise." 

Well, that was a good idea, Blair thought, drifting back into his drug-induced haze... That was a really good idea... 

"He come out of it yet?" Jim asked, slipping silently into the room, and handing Rae a cup of tea. She hated coffee, he'd found out that first night, while they were waiting for word about Blair's condition. 

She shrugged. "A little. I told him to go back to sleep, but he didn't need all that much prodding." 

Jim smiled and a small chuckle escaped him for the first time since he'd driven up to that bank two days ago. "He'd better enjoy it while he can. The pain's going to be unbearable when he finally comes to." 

"You know," she began, sipping her tea. "I never did get to ask you what happened to him in there. My hearing's good, but it's not *that* good." 

He sighed mightily, not wanting to relive it. "Lovell shot one of the other hostages... And Sandburg sort of lost it." 

Rae smiled reminiscently. "I've seen *that* before." She took another sip of the hot liquid before answering Jim's questioning gaze. "When we were... God, juniors, I guess... There was this guy on campus. Niall Danes. He wasn't really great to his girlfriends, if you know what I mean." Jim nodded with a smile, and she continued. "Anyway, one of the girls he was going out with was in a class with Blair. He saw the bruises on her face, and he just *knew* what had happened. So, he picked a fight with Danes." She laughed now, and Jim shuddered in response. It was that young, carefree laugh that was so like Sandburg's. "Danes must have outweighed him by a hundred pounds! But Blair took him on, right outside the student union." 

"What happened?" 

She waved off the touch of concern in his voice, gesturing to their mutual friend. "Mild-mannered anthropologist over there broke Danes's jaw, the bastard lost two teeth, and Blair walked around for a week with a shiner that you wouldn't believe." She shrugged. "Still, Danes never had the chance to beat his girlfriend again." Rae's smile was thoughtful. "Blair didn't even really know the girl, you know? He just hated to see that happen to anyone." 

Jim nodded. That was the Sandburg he knew. The kid never thought about what would happen to him--he just didn't want to see anyone else hurt. Jim supposed that that was one of the things he loved about his partner. 

Rae took a deep draught of tea, leaning back and enjoying the warmth of it, as her companion stayed sunk in his own musings. "You know," she began suddenly, an edge of good-natured irritation to her voice. "I didn't really expect to spend my time in Cascade hanging around a hospital waiting for him to wake up." 

"I can call you when he wakes up, you know," Jim returned mildly. "It's no big deal--not like there anything to do but watch him breathe." 

She smiled knowingly, hiding it with her styrofoam cup. "Which is why you keep taking time off work, right?" 

Jim shrugged, not catching the implication. "Simon's pretty understanding about this sort of thing, you know?" He smiled--the grin as fond as any that his companion had yet to show him. "Blair really hates hospitals, and if he woke up alone, he'd probably check himself out just to spite me." He sat back. "Anyway, my partner over there is the one who'll have to do most of the paperwork on this one." 

"Your partner?" Rae asked curiously. "Why do you call him that?" 

Jim looked over at her, surprised. "He's an observer for the department. He didn't tell you that?" 

"Sure, he told me. He just didn't tell me he was partnered with a cop--a cop who was also his roommate." She raked him again, and the appraising look in her eyes made Jim distinctly uncomfortable. "Partners, huh?" 

He took a minute, not trying to figure out exactly what she was saying. He didn't want to know right now, to be quite honest. He was saved from any further discussion by the chirping of his cellphone. He flipped it open, turning away from the hospital bed. "Yeah, Ellison." 

"Jim, it's Gina." 

"Oh, hey, Gina. How's it going?" 

Her sigh was irritated. "I'm calling about Blair, Jim. I didn't just call to chat... Simon said you were taking some time off, so I wanted to make sure that..." 

Jim smiled at her concern. "He'll be fine, Gina. We're just waiting for him to coast back down the Demoral Highway right now." 

This time, she loosed a sigh of relief. "Well, good. Listen, let me know when he's up for visitors. I have some things to discuss with him." 

"They better not be what I *think* they are, Gina, or you're dead meat." 

Gina laughed. "Jimmy, my discussions with your partner are his concern and mine--*not* yours." 

Jim tried to sound stern. "Well, they better not *become* my concern, Mom." 

Gina grinned over the line. Jim hadn't called her Mom since he'd moved out of Vice division. "Oh, yes, sir, Detective," she declared, mock-serious. 

"Get off my phone," he demanded playfully, hanging up on her pleasant laughter. 

Rae was watching him. "You treat your mother like that?" 

Jim chuckled. "Gina is everybody's mom--and yes, we all treat her like that." 

Rae smirked. "'Everybody's mom', huh? I'd love to see her Mother's Day card." 

They sat in companionable silence for a long while, just listening to each other, to the heart monitor, to the heartbeat that it kept track of. Blair continued to breathe evenly, though Jim could hear the rattle in his damaged lung. He sighed deeply. This time, he supposed he couldn't even say that this was his fault. The kid just seemed to get into trouble, all on his own. 

But Jim was his partner--his "protector"... He just wouldn't have been able to stand it if Blair had... 

Rae sat quietly, watching as Jim tried to have a silent conversation with the sleeping man before them. Yep, she decided, hiding another grin. Detective Ellison was hooked. 

Blair hadn't really said anything about a new man in his life, but every letter she'd received from him in Borneo had lines like "Jim's starting to think that..." and "Yesterday, Jim was saying..." Blair was as hooked as his beefcake partner. She wondered then why she hadn't seen any signs of their relationship in the loft. 

She looked back and forth between them, thinking. Maybe they were clueless? It could happen. Blair wasn't always the most insightful guy when it came to sexual tension, and Ellison looked like he was probably the type to deny any softer feeling he'd ever had... 

An almost cruel grin lit her face. Maybe she'd have to do something to get them together...  
  


* * *

Blair focused on his feet. He focused on his feet, because they were two of the small parts of his body that didn't hurt. He recognized the cottony feel of some pain killer, and decided that, for once, he was glad of the chemical interference. If that wasn't there, he had a feeling he'd be in one huge world of hurt. 

That musing out of the way, he began to wonder why he needed the pain killer at all. What had happened *this* time? He figured it was time to just open his eyes and find out. 

"Chief?" Jim's worried voice immediately calmed him, before he even had a chance to start to panic. He couldn't open his left eye! His right eye was blurry, but he couldn't even *open* his left! He turned his head gingerly, and took in Jim and Rae standing side by side next to the bed. Okay, fine, he thought, puzzled. So what the hell was Rae doing here in the first place? Her flight wasn't even supposed to come in until tomorrow... Unless it already *was* tomorrow... 

"What happened?" he asked roughly, his throat feeling hard and scraped. 

"You saved the day," Jim joked pleasantly, taking hold of his hand. "Simon's ready to pin a medal on you whenever you are." 

Blair wanted to shake his head in confusion, but he seemed to remember having done that once before recently, with explosive results. "...Medal?" he asked, baffled, casting Rae a penetrating look. 

Rae's visage fell slightly, and she stood, carefully squeezing Blair's hand. "I'm going to go get the doctor, okay, guys?" She flashed her confused friend a gentle smile. "I'll be right back." 

Jim moved over to take her place, his face now comfortingly close to Blair's, his hand still entwined with his partner's. "What do you remember, pal?" he asked in a quiet voice. 

Blair thought a moment, not able to work up the energy to shrug. "Nothing, I guess..." A memory flashed through his mind, too brief to help him. "I don't know." 

"Probably a residual from the concussion," said a soft, female voice. 

Jim looked up in surprise at Dr. Tallor. He had been so focused on his partner that he hadn't heard the woman come in. She headed for the bed, while Rae slipped into the seat that Jim had vacated when Blair had opened his eye. 

"So how are you feeling, Mr. Sandburg?" Tallor asked brightly. 

Blair frowned. "You want to know the answer?" 

"Probably not." 

He sighed as deeply as his healing lung would let him. "Then I'll lie and say I feel fine." 

Jim watched the doctor check his friend out, and a cold sadness being to grow in his stomach. Not for Blair's sake--that the kid couldn't remember this most recent trauma could only be considered a good thing--but for the people who'd been killed. Blair was slated to be the star witness in Beverly's case against Lovell. If he couldn't remember... 

"I think the best thing here is to let you finish waking up, okay?" Tallor was saying. "Maybe then, we can see how much you remember." 

Blair nodded dully, turning confused eyes to his friends. "How long have I been here?" 

"Three days," Rae shrugged. 

"Oh, man, Rae..." Blair grimaced guiltily. "Have you been sitting here the whole time?" 

"Oh no," she replied coolly. "I actually spent quite a bit of my time with a gorgeous man I just met recently." She turned vixen eyes on Jim. "He's even let me move into his place." 

Blair smiled teasingly at his loftmate, the twinkle in his one good eye doing the detective a world of good. "Got you wrapped around her finger already, does she?" 

Jim grinned disarmingly. "Not quite--but she *is* neater than you are." 

"Ouch." Blair meant it to refer to the comment, but he found that it also worked for the pain in his chest when he laughed. 

"None of that, buddy," Jim cautioned, watching the blood drain from an already pale face. He looked up at the doctor, but directed his words to the patient. "Look, do you want to see if they can get some more pain killer into you?" 

Blair grimaced at the thought. "Not if it's going to knock me out for another three days, I don't." 

"No problem, Mr. Sandburg," Tallor assured him. "I'll have them put you on a lighter drug as soon as the Demerol has cleared your system." She looked at the trio sternly. "But until it does, you're going to be drifting in and out--and you'll need the rest." She shined a smile on her patient. "Do you think you can kick these two out of here, or should I call security?" 

Jim looked ready to argue, so Blair tightened his grip on his friend's hand. "No, Doctor, don't bother." He turned to Rae. "Rae? Maybe you should take that new boyfriend of yours home and make him supper." He stared critically at Jim with his one good eye. "And get him to shave, too. Don Johnson, he ain't." 

His partner smiled, but the concern was still heavy in his eyes. "You sure you'll be okay?" 

To prove his point, Blair yawned. "I'm fine. I just need to log some serious non-pharmaceutical sleep." He closed his eye tiredly. "When you come back, bring something to keep me busy, okay? If how I feel is any indication, I'll be here a while, huh?" 

Jim nodded, rising as he gave his partner's hand one last squeeze. "I'll bring the paperwork from the office," he teased leadingly. Before he left, he just needed to hear Blair be Blair. 

The younger man didn't disappoint. "No way, man. Haven't I slept enough this week?" 

Satisfied, Jim let Rae lead him from the room. He'd worry about the case tomorrow. For now, he was just glad to have his partner back.  
  


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